Willystine Goodsell (1870–1962) and John Dewey (1859–1952): history,philosophy and women’s education

This article explores the work of history and philosophy in publications by Willystine Goodsell, professor of history and philosophy at Teachers College, Columbia University, and the entanglement of Goodsell’s approach to scholarship with that of her doctoral supervisor John Dewey. The article experiments with diffractive reading to examine Dewey’s and Goodsell’s approach to history, as well as Goodsell’s configuration of women’s historical and contemporary participation in education. It looks at Dewey’s comment that women’s ‘philosophising’ would not be the same ‘in viewpoint or tenor’ as that composed from the ‘different masculine experience of things’ and investigates the principles that order liberal and vocational education in Goodsell’s view of a reformed education for women. The conclusion asks whether diffractive reading is an enhanced form of intertextuality.     

Validity Evidence of an Electronic Portfolio for Preservice Teachers

This study applied Messick's unified, multifaceted concept of construct validity to an electronic portfolio system used in a teacher education program. The subjects included 128 preservice teachers who recently completed their final portfolio reviews and student teaching experiences. Four of Messick's six facets of validity were investigated for the portfolio in this study, along with a discussion of the remaining facets examined in two previous studies. The evidence provided support for the substantive and generalizability aspects of validity, and limited support for the content, structural, external, and consequential aspects of validity. It was suggested that the electronic portfolio may be used as one requirement for certification purposes, but may not be valid for the purpose of assessing teacher competencies .     

Changing What Is Taught: Hearing the Voices of the Underrepresented

A major challenge facing institutions today is determining the role of multiculturalism in the curriculum. Institutions that decide to incorporate multicultural perspectives into the general education curriculum will face a long and complex process. In 1991, policy makers at Florida State University made the decision to require all students to take multicultural courses to fulfill general education requirements. This article provides insight into the challenges that institutional policy makers face as they seek to change the curriculum to include the voices of those previously underrepresented.     

Auditory Context and Memory Retrieval in Young Infants

Three-month-old infants were trained to move an overhead crib mobile while 1 of 2 musical selections was played. Retention was assessed 1 or 7 days later in the presence of either the same music or a different musical selection. in Experiment 1, the musical selections were very different (classical versus jazz); in Experiment 2, they were much more similar (two classical pieces). Infants in both experiments displayed 1 day retention regardless of wich music was played during the retention test. At 7 days, retention was seen only when the music played during the retention test matched the training music. These data are consistent with similar findings showing that 3-month-old infants'memory is disrupted at long retention intervals when the context present during retention testing does not match the learning context. As the infant's memory wanes, context appears to function as a necessary cue for the retrieval of acquired expectancies.     

Paradigm wars, dialogue or dance: is rapprochement possible and/or desirable?

In focusing on the Kincheloe and Tobin paper, ‘The Much Exaggerated Death of Positivism,’ this forum explores the hegemony of positivism in the professional practices of a group of educators whose research expertise lies in the fields of science education, mathematics education and leadership education. Responding to the first question, ‘What is your personal/professional experience of the hegemony of positivism?’, four key issues arise: is positivism part of the external world or is it within us (and thus what is our agency)?, the role of positivism as a driver of Western cultural imperialism, dualism as the chief logic of positivism, and the difficulty of responding to positivism from a pluralist perspective. The second question, ‘Is rapprochement between positivism and other paradigms possible and/or desirable without being re-colonised?’, raises a number of key issues that, although relatively new to science education, are of increasing interest to cultural studies researchers keen to embrace alternative research paradigms with which to create culturally inclusive science curricula. The discussants reveal their personal experiences of being marginalised by the hegemony of positivism and give voice to a range of opinions about how best to respond. The integral perspective of spiral dynamics is proposed as a model of paradigm evolution, our fundamental assumptions about modern progress are questioned, and the non-dualist logic of dialectics is explored as a more inclusive rationality for researchers. In the spirit of counter-hegemonic cultural studies, the discussants draw on their personal Buddhist and Hindu perspectives to open new doorways into complex ontological systems lying beyond the simplistic materialism of crypto-positivism. We are given a glimpse of powerful means of generating new insights into the emergent universe (within and without) that an evolving science endeavours to explain.     

Computational Thinking from a Disciplinary Perspective: Integrating Computational Thinking in K-12 Science,Technology, Engineering,and Mathematics Education

This article provides an introduction for the special issue of the Journal of Science Education and Technology focused on computational thinking (CT) from a disciplinary perspective. The special issue connects earlier research on what K-12 students can learn and be able to do using CT with the CT skills and habits of mind needed to productively participate in professional CT-integrated STEM fields. In this context, the phrase “disciplinary perspective” simultaneously holds two meanings: it refers to and aims to make connections between established K-12 STEM subject areas (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and newer CT-integrated disciplines such as computational sciences. The special issue presents a framework for CT integration and includes articles that illuminate what CT looks like from a disciplinary perspective, the challenges inherent in integrating CT into K-12 STEM education, and new ways of measuring CT aligned more closely with disciplinary practices. The aim of this special issue is to offer research-based and practitioner-grounded insights into recent work in CT integration and provoke new ways of thinking about CT integration from researchers, practitioners, and research-practitioner partnerships.